2011-05-10

Trapped Frogs

There are situations in the animal kingdom where tragedies occur due to a miscalculation. E.g. a frog will go into a space in the rocks and it so happens that there is enough food available that it doesn't need to leave, so it remains in that safe place. It then successfully grows to an adult, only then finding that the rock opening is too small for it to get out of when food is in short supply. The tragedy is that we can see this fundamentally flawed behaviour, but we can't write a "frog instruction manual" so that the frogs can protect themselves.

We have a similar situation with humans trapped under dictatorships in places like Syria and Iran. It is unlikely that they will be able to free themselves any more than the frog can. The laws of physics are stacked against them. We are very lucky indeed that the way weapons systems developed, the liberal democracies survived by the skin of their teeth. Otherwise we'd be looking down the barrel of worldwide Nazi slavery, with no-one to come to the rescue.

Given the lucky and flukey way that liberal democracy has managed to wind up in a winning position, we now owe it to those who didn't make it, to rescue them. It's what we would expect/demand if the situation was reversed.